November FMQ Challenge Entry

November Sew Cal Gal's FMQ Challenge Entry!

Whew! Going right up to the last minute this month...

This month's expert was Sarah Vedeler. Her tutorial on spirals was outstanding! She had wonderful materials that we could print out and trace, and believe me, I did. It was all about control this month, and for me, it was a real challenge!

I knew I was in trouble when I started tracing and found it very difficult to stay on the lines with a pen and paper! I traced and traced, but it was really hard for me to keep those spirals round. I then moved on to her sheets with guidelines in which we drew our own spirals, not much better. So I kept practicing. Here's some samples:

 Then I started doodling. I doodled a ton of spirals, but without guidelines. That was a lot easier, but just eyeballing the spirals sure didn't help with my control. It was more fun, though. Examples:

So, it's the last day of the month, and I really need to sew. I marked the grids on my sample sandwich, took a deep breath, and gave it the old college try. After removing the grid, here's the product:

I found it very difficult to keep these round, obviously, especially near the edge of the sample. Don't think I'll be trying this in any outside borders anytime soon.

The other project I finished this month was from a workshop I took about a year ago. It was a wool applique workshop by Roberta Williams, who does these beautiful quilts with appliqued birds. It was a lot of fun to do, and I loved the results. Here's the finished walll hanging:

The colors are much richer in person. And for the first time, I quilted the daylights out of this one, which really made the birds "pop"! Without everything I've learned doing Sew Cal Gal's FMQ Challenge, I would never have attempted this. Thanks so much, Sew Cal Gal!

Tomorrow is December, the last month in the Challenge. I can't wait!